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Progress for Publishing

4/28/2018

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Just a medium-length entry here.
On the personal side, my wife is home and slowly getting better. But her condition with the pancreas is permanent...there's nothing the medics can do.
I'm still working on the length edit of Saving Atlantis. Going through it the first time I was able to cut about 10,000 words, mostly by deleting two sub plots and abridging a third. Now I'm going through it again, scrapping a paragraph here and there. There's also another subplot I can axe if necessary.
What hurts is that the story will not be as good as it was. Besides being (only a little) envious of King, Koonz, and others for their financial success, what I really envy is that publishers know their books will sell so they can write novels as long as they think necessary.
Poor unproven writers like me must adhere to preferred word counts to get published, even though the shorter story is not as good as the longer version.
The publisher and I have been sending the PDF proof of Just Lucky, Book 2 back and forth, fine-tuning everything. I hope we've covered everything, and the final ready-for-publication version is error-free. I'm sure we've done the best we can.
If not by the end of the month, early in May the book should be on the market.
As I may have mentioned, I'm usually reading two books at once; one for twenty to thirty minutes before clocking in at work and one at home when I find myself in the reading room.
I'm about 80% done with King's Insomnia at work. At home I just completed The Frankenstein Papers by Fred Saberhagen. I'll be getting a double dose of King for a while...for my home reading I'm starting Book III of his Dark Tower series, The Waste Lands.
I've read the entire series, but I finished it over ten years ago. Books I and II, The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three I've read a few times and remember them pretty well, but the other five I've read just the once. So I'll reread them. I'm set for a long time with reading material.
Are you? Need something to read? If you like fantasy, or if you've never read any and think you might like it, both of my fantasy novels are pretty good. Prophecy of Honor is shorter and has only a little magic, though what there is is important.
If you don't like fantasy, the Just Lucky story is written for men and women over eighteen. There is romance, a little erotica, tragedy, vengeance, humor, family, friendship, and occasional bad language. It took two full-length novels to tell it all, and there was another novel's-worth of story I cut because those sub plots didn't serve to move the story forward. But I could write a full novel on stuff that I left out...which I might do if enough readers ask for it.
Although I've mentioned my books before here, I try not to actually advertise them. But once in a while...hey, why not?
Please keep reading.
As you read social media, or discuss in person, try to remember that no matter how much someone disagrees with you, and you with them, they are probably as sincere in their beliefs as you are in yours. So try to argue, or better, discuss, without emotion. Keep to rational objective thought as much as possible.
Thank you for reading.

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A Call for Another Hatchet Job

4/4/2018

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 On a personal note, my wife's health has been pretty good since November...right up until the end of March when her pancreas put her back in the hospital. We'll just have to hope the medics can fix her up again, and this time more long term.
To keep the odd theme of writing this on some kind of holiday, I should have started it on April 1. I didn't, so the continuing coincidence is kaput.
For those of you interested in writing, I must recommend again Anne R. Allen's blog. I contacted Anne years ago with a question and she was able to answer it with the best possible knowledge—her personal experience. As she and her co-blogger Ruth Harris say, they've made the mistakes so we don't have to. Here's the link to the post that I'll reference in this post.: http://annerallen.com/2018/03/word-count-guidelines-by-genre/
If you go to the bottom of the page, you can subscribe.
Notice the title: word count guidelines by genre.
This knowledge is exceptionally valuable. Readers, and therefore publishers, are moving their preferences to shorter books. I had no idea how much the word counts had changed.
My paranormal romance/thriller, Saving Atlantis, was over 106,000 words. The preference now is 90,000 words, max. This may be at least part of why all literary agents have declined to see more of the manuscript than what I send them in the query letter.
I (and virtually every other writer) wish that agents and editors would give us a reason for the rejections. That fact is itself the reason. If they gave that courtesy to even one writer they know that the word would spread and soon every inquiring writer would expect some kind of specific feedback.
Agents and editors are just too busy to do that, with a few exceptions. One exception that I've mentioned before is Page and Spine: pagespineficshowcase.com They still provide feedback even for rejected submissions.
So I'm trying to trim a whole bunch from the novel. I'm a little over half-way through the trimming and I've managed to cut almost half of the required amount.
It's a pain. The easy part is cutting out a few minor subplots. What's harder is eliminating a paragraph here, half a page there, while keeping the writing and story flow honest and interesting. There is no way I'll cut 16,000 words on the first time through. I'll have to go through it at least three times, and maybe five or six. That's not only to make the cuts, but also to make sure the story still reads as well as it did before the hatchet job.
Robert Heinlein noted that after he completed his Hugo Award winning Stranger in a Strange Land, the finished product was three times longer than it should have been, and that cutting it took longer than writing it.
I don't expect the editing of Saving Atlantis to take that long, but I'm prepared to take as long as necessary.
I'm also working on a short story. My fantasy novel, the first in the Lying Swords series, is having to take a back seat for now.
Just Lucky, Book 2: Love and Hate should be available by the end of the month. We're just trying to get the cover right.
How about you? Any questions, comments, or complaints?
Thanks, and be sure to read something you're interested in every day.


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    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

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